Building Capability through Upskilling and Reskilling Virtual Working Group

Building Capability through Upskilling and Reskilling Virtual Working Group
Thursday, April 21, 2022 | 1:00-2:30pm (ET)

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, workers have been asked to expand their roles and take on new responsibilities to help their organizations navigate unprecedented disruption. At the same time, the challenges surrounding talent attraction and retention have underscored for organizations the importance of being able to fully leverage and adapt their current talent pools. These and other trends have made it apparent that upskilling and reskilling will be increasingly pivotal to organizations efforts to transform work and maintain competitive advantage. Indeed, executives responding to the 2021 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends survey identified the ability of people to adapt, reskill, and assume new roles as the top-ranked factor for navigating future disruptions. At the same time, only 17% of these executives reported that their workers are very ready to adapt, reskill, and assume new roles. Clearly, there is a disconnect between the current and desired future states.

In this working group, CAHRS Academic Director and William J. Conaty Professor Brad Bell will lead a discussion around how companies are using upskilling and reskilling to help employees adapt and assume new roles. Some of the questions that will guide our discussion include:

COVID-19 prompted the rapid redeployment of workers and real-time capability building. What lessons have been learned from this experience that can help inform future capability building efforts?
Capability building efforts can be mandated top-down through workforce planning approaches or driven bottom-up by giving employees the ability to self-select based on their interests and abilities. Which approach is most evident in your organization and what do you see as some of the benefits and drawbacks?
How are other aspects of your HR system (e.g., talent acquisition, rewards, succession planning, mobility) being redesigned to support and align with your upskilling and reskilling efforts?
What technologies and data is your organization using to inform upskilling and reskilling efforts?

Prior to the session, attendees should give some thought to the questions included in the description, so they are prepared to share with the group. We also strongly prefer that participants be on camera during the session to allow for more engaging interaction. If for some reason after you sign up for the working group, something comes up last minute (especially while many of us are working from home), it would be great to get even a last minute e-mail advising us that you cannot attend as we sometimes have a waiting list.